I'm a two browser man. Or rather: I used to be. For a long time I have been using Konqueror and Opera 7 more or less concurrently, depending on the task at hand. I've always liked Opera for its polished, intuitive GUI, and the good rendering engine. However, something always made me go back to Konq, it just felt better for some tasks.
So anyway, the other day my fellow developer Illissius suggested I should upgrade to Opera 8.5, the latest stable release. I did so. And boy was that worth it. Opera 8.5 is incredible, it's pretty much the most polished piece of GUI software I've seen in my life.
What's changed from version 7 to 8?
- Incredible, awesome, fuck-me-running rendering performance. The engine is so fast, it isn't funny. Using Opera 8.5 feels like having a new computer. Rendering is instant, memory usage is very low (never any harddisk activity, on a low spec machine), and it's also quite standard conformant.
- Completely overhauled GUI, extremely stripped down. Simple, functional, and a lot like Firefox. Clearly Firefox was a source of inspiration here, it's obvious. There are some issues with the settings dialogs, which are not always completely intuitive. Once it's configured, it's the best GUI you could wish for though. Highly usable.
That's all there is to say, engine and GUI are the two components of a web browser. Opera oozes polish and quality, but the most amazing aspect is truly its performance. I'm guessing that the parallel development of embedded versions of the browser has helped in optimizing the engine.
Renderer: 10/10
GUI: 8/10
